Twitter appears on innumerable personal and professional websites nowadays, whether it is a simple “Follow me” badge in the header or a display of the author’s latest tweets in the sidebar. No longer a fad, Twitter is now a necessity for every website, not just for sharing your thoughts and keeping in touch with people, but also for marketing, advertising and even searching. But you may be wondering, How can I make Twitter work the way I want on my website?

Below, we present Twitter Web Designer and Developer Toolbox, API and Tutorials, a series of tutorials, links, references, libraries and plug-ins that will help you do everything you’ve always wanted to do with Twitter.

Twitter Development Links

Twitter Technology Blog1
If you’re writing an application for the Twitter API or just curious about the code, tools and practices, this blog has something for you.

Introduction to the Twitter API

Twitter API for Dummies6
This is an easy-to-follow tutorial with several examples based on different Web technologies. It has just enough for you to start your own Twitter project.

Using the Twitter API7
This is an excellent introduction to using the Twitter API. The API offers many different ways to connect to your details including XML, JSON, Atom and RSS. This tutorial uses XML, PHP and cURL.

Get Started With the Twitter API8
If you’re looking to try out an API for the first time, Twitter’s is a great one to start with. Its API is simple and easy to use. The only thing to keep in mind is that Twitter limits you to 70 requests per 60-minute intervals, so remember to cache or otherwise store your results.

Getting Started with the Twitter API9
Twitter’s API lets you read and write Twitter messages with minimal coding in nearly any programming language. In fact, you can use this API without doing any programming. A slightly more advanced tutorial than the previous three.

Building Your Website Around Twitter

Build Your Own Social Home!10
Many of us have not only our own websites, but also Twitter, Flickr, ScrnShots and Facebook accounts, too. This tutorial brings all of these together neatly on one page.

How to Create an RSS-Enabled Micro-Blog with Twitter12
Have you ever wanted to create a simple multi-person blog but didn’t want to bother setting up an entire WordPress installation? If so, this tutorial is for you. By combining Twitter Search, Atom feeds, hash-tags and PHP, you can create an RSS-enabled, micro-blog using Twitter and be up and running in less than 10 minutes.

Scripting Twitter with cURL24
cURL is a versatile command-line utility designed to script Web page interactions. As a little demo, this tutorial shows you how to use it to easily to overcome the shortcomings of Twitter’s API. You can also view the Perl + LWP version of this tutorial here: Scripting Twitter with Perl + LWP25

PHP + Twitter + Google Calendar + SMS26
This tutorial shows you how to add an event to Google Calendar by text message. It shows you how to hook up your Twitter account to Google Calendar using their APIs.

TwitterZoid PHP Script27
TwitterZoid is the name of this PHP script for parsing Twitter RSS feeds. This tutorial shows you how to successfully implement this.

Twitter and AJAX Tutorials

jQuery Plug-in for Twitter30
This is a simple, unobtrusive and customizable client-side method for easily embedding a Twitter feed on a Web page. From Coda, you know it’s going to be smooth. View demo here31.

Twitter Emulation, Using MooTools 1.2 and PHP42
What most people probably don’t know is how simple it is to emulate Twitter’s functionality. Using PHP, MySQL and MooTools JavaScript, you can implement a Twitter-like status system in no time.

Sidebar, Widgets and Badges

Create a Twitter Box in Your Sidebar44
In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to easily create a fancy box that displays your latest Twitter rants in your sidebar, without having to turn to clunky plug-ins that bog down your blog.

A Resizable CSS-Based Twitter Website Badge52
If you find the official Twitter badges too big and clunky, then this tutorial is for you. Display your latest tweet in a neat CSS-designed widget that resizes depending on the size of your tweet.

Building My Own Twitter Badge with RSS57
In this tutorial, you will make your own Twitter badge with PHP by reading the RSS feed that Twitter provides. The default Twitter badge uses script tags that do not display when a user has JavaScript disabled. This code will render no matter what and still displays links and the names of tweeters.

Building an Application with the Twitter API64
Twitter API libraries are available for most popular programming languages, and they’re opening up new possibilities for publishing information. In this tutorial, you will use a short Python script to create tweets when the Dow Jones Industrial Average (or any stock or index you like) makes a big jump.

Building Your Own Twitter Client with Fluid and jQuery67
Here, you will learn how to build your own Twitter client using Fluid (which contains Web apps in their own process/window), to see if it is possible to build a completely open-source, ad-free Twitter-like client on a single Web page, using only JavaScript and HTML.

Twitter Libraries of Note

TwitterScript69 (Actionscript)
This is an ActionScript 3.0 library for accessing Twitter’s APIs. This was originally code from Twitter, but it is being open sourced so that it can be maintained and kept current.

QTwitLib70(C++)
QTwitLib is currently in a functioning stage, which allows a user to make calls to the library, which in turn makes POST/GET requests to Twitter and returns a message and status code for the action request.

Milan

Jimmy Rittenborg

You also forget alertthingy.com which gather a lot (if not all) of these social updates into one pretty simple and nice Adobe AIR app.. aside from tweetdeck, this thing also allows you to update your facebook status and follow along with whatever your friends are doing, directly from your desktop.

Dinu Dominic Manns

Randa Clay

Wow – thanks for the comprehensive list of tools! Wanted to also make sure your readers knew about our new site, My Social Buttons that has lots of Twitter icons, graphics and buttons (along with many other social media tools).

Chris

One more suggestion for building your website around Twitter. SweetCron is a lifestreaming blog software that seems to have a lot of potential. I have not installed my copy yet, but have a few friends that are running SweetCron blogs. Thanks for the article.

sefakoc

Sarah

I don’t really get Twitter, I have to say. The hype surrounding Twitter reminds me of that which surrounded MySpace before it passed into “uncool” territory. I was hoping for an explanation in this article of why Twitter is now “more than a fad”, especially since it seems so similar to a Facebook status. Can someone explain it to me? I’m not catching on.

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mienta

Dainis Graveris

Lachelle T.

Excellent post! I implemented one of the tutorials on my website.
To those who don’t “get” twitter or understand the purpose – look at all the information above!! Twitter has one simple function – to update others on what you’re doing and yet there’s so many different ways it can be extended and personalized onto your own website. You cannot do that with Facebook or Myspace. Sometimes the simplest things are the best things folks!

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Leo

@Sarah – I agree, when people say “Twitter is now a necessity for every website” it just makes me cringe and wonder what they have been drinking. Out of about 20 clients I have spoke to none are even remotely interested in implementing twitter or using it. Like most they see no value in it and I am really hard pressed to find any myself.

My two cents, Twitter is hardly necessary or useful for the vast majority of websites and is just another social networking app that people like because it lets them talk to a theoretical audience online (ooooh look at me, I’m Internet famous!)

Spank McMonkey

Jacob

New Standard

Im a bit sick of hearing about twitter as well, however I still use it. It’s a very useful tool and is capable of so many things. However, as this post illustrates, it could use some upgrades. Excellent post!

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requirezero

as i posted before twitter is just a big empty baloon. It is not next facebook. I read an article about twitter users. More than %80 of are minors (below 18 years old). Mostly using twitter for “oohhh look at lindsay hair, hey here is new britney shoes”… After reading this article any site with “follow us on twitter” icon makes me think it is another kiddy site

theCount

leo

@W3Planting –
Saying “its up to one how smartly he/she uses it :)” is of course rubbish, the real question is “Can twitter bring any value to my client or their site?” in most cases the answer will be no, no it will not. If the answer is yes then by all means you can go down the rabbit hole of “How can we leverage this technology to accomplish our goals” but to just simply go all “OMG” over twitter and try to apply it to everything is rather amateur.

Brian Cray

Scott

What about tools like ours, MicroPlaza – a which delivers filtered news based on the people you follow. For example you can create a design ‘tribe’ on the platform and add in all your design related contacts to get the aggregated view of what they’re sharing.

Raj

Greg Fletcher

Is it possible to protect my Twitter updates and also publish them to a password protected website? I want to get my boss using twitter but want to keep the public from seeing the updates, then post a feed on our intranet. Ideas?

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Rory Martin

Thanks for article, ashamed to say I didn’t really know much about this TWITTER craze but this indepth tutorial has filled in the gaps, cheers.
I’ll begin adding the feature to my websites from now on.

John Brady

undauntedTwit

extremely useful thanks. although ive never been a fan of fb i’ve become hooked on twitter. something about the microblogging, realtime feed that appeals to some. twitter does especially well with all the application / tools support through their api. kudos for them for opening it up so much. follow me if you want (http://twitter.com/undauntedTwit) and have a good life!

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Cindy

A twitter api of course provides the same functionality that is provided by http://www.twitter.com. Some sites have been using the API to mimic the twitter web content, yet build upon it. I’ve seen several instances of course. Many tools provide grouping and customized searching or a new site I found, Twaitter.com provides a fairly in depth scheduling platform. The use of twitter’s api is endless.

Tina

Someone just sent me this link and I have to say: Twitter is NOT a necessity.

When people tell me, “you just don’t get it” about Twitter, I want to smack them. Uh, YOU don’t get that YOU are being had. You’re drinking the Kool-Aid without stopping to think that it’s just another means to suck time from your life. Marketing 101: always present your widget as a NEED. The Twitter marketers have successfully done just that.

Jonathan Nelson

great list you got here smashing magazine. i thought i’d chime in and let you know about my new Twitter application i just launched called TwitterMass. you can test it out here http://twittermass.com. people are calling it the twitter networking tool on cruise control.

Alexander Russo

Will someone please explain to me the twitter widget that is used on the lady gaga website (ladygaga.com). You can basically tweet what you think of her bad romance video or anything on her website. On top of the widget it says “fan tweet – share your thoughts on this video”, I want to add that feature to my website but I can’t seem to find how her developers did it.

Jürgen

Hey, Guys,
I created a non commercial twitter service which is more like a proof of concept. Now that it’s in the wild I would like to discuss it here.
You can find it at http://twittlot.com
It gives you the ability to twitter long tweets (up to 1000 characters)
Regards
Juergen
PS If this is the wrong spot for it, maybe you could name me one?

Jeevan Dongre

Hey the tutorials were awesome I have issue where I have to build a twitter application for my web application which enables the users to get the twits of their desired hash tag they just new to enter the required hash tag or username to the twits of that particular tweet. How do I do that. Please explain me how to do it.

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Arifur Rahman

Arifur Rahman

Michael

I work at a company called Switchplane and we are trying to think of ways to intergrate with Twitter and Facebook in a more interactive fashion. The first thing we did was have a page which collated several tweets from various hash tags and @ mentions.

We have also come up with a way to automatically check if a user is following us, has retweeted one of our statuses etc.. in order to give them a reward.

I was wondering if anyone else has done any interesting/interactive Twitter integration. And also if you have any ideas that we coulld implement.

Thomas ʕ•̫͡•ʔ (@ne1up)

Adam

How will the above examples fair when Twitter turns off it’s API in June? And how concerned are site owners about following Twitter’s visual guidelines on the basis that Twitter might turn off your newly authenticated API connection if you don’t follow them to the letter. To say it’s restricting to design is an understantement: https://dev.twitter.com/terms/display-requirements

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